TangiWheel: A widget for manipulating collections on tabletop displays supporting hybrid Input modality

In this paper we present TangiWheel, a collection manipulation widget for tabletop displays. Our implementation is flexible, allowing either multi-touch or interaction, or even a hybrid scheme to better suit user choice and convenience. Different TangiWheel aspects and features are compared with other existing widgets for collection manipulation. The study reveals that TangiWheel is the first proposal to support a hybrid input modality with large resemblance levels between touch and tangible interaction styles. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the techniques used in each input scheme for a better understanding of tangible surface interfaces in complex tasks performed by a single user (e.g., involving a typical master-slave exploration pattern). The results show that tangibles perform significantly better than fingers, despite dealing with a greater number of interactions, in situations that require a large number of acquisitions and basic manipulation tasks such as establishing location and orientation. However, when users have to perform multiple exploration and selection operations that do not require previous basic manipulation tasks, for instance when collections are fixed in the interface layout, touch input is significantly better in terms of required time and number of actions. Finally, when a more elastic collection layout or more complex additional insertion or displacement operations are needed, the hybrid and tangible approaches clearly outperform finger-based interactions.. ©2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC & Science Press, ChinaThe work is supported by the Ministry of Education of Spain under Grant No. TSI2010-20488. 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Towards a resolution of some outstanding issues in transitive research: an empirical test on middle childhood

Transitive Inference (deduce B > D from B > C and C > D) can help us to understand other areas of sociocognitive development. Across three experiments, learning, memory, and the validity of two transitive paradigms were investigated. In Experiment 1 (N = 121), 7-year-olds completed a three-term nontraining task or a five-term task requiring extensive-training. Performance was superior on the three-term task. Experiment 2 presented 5–10-year-olds with a new five-term task, increasing learning opportunities without lengthening training (N = 71). Inferences improved, suggesting children can learn five-term series rapidly. Regarding memory, the minor (CD) premise was the best predictor of BD-inferential performance in both task-types. However, tasks exhibited different profiles according to associations between the major (BC) premise and BD inference, correlations between the premises, and the role of age. Experiment 3 (N = 227) helped rule out the possible objection that the above findings simply stemmed from three-term tasks with real objects being easier to solve than computer-tasks. It also confirmed that, unlike for five-term task (Experiments 1 & 2), inferences on three-term tasks improve with age, whether the age range is wide (Experiment 3) or narrow (Experiment 2). I conclude that the tasks indexed different routes within a dual-process conception of transitive reasoning: The five-term tasks indexes Type 1 (associative) processing, and the three-term task indexes Type 2 (analytic) processing. As well as demonstrating that both tasks are perfectly valid, these findings open up opportunities to use transitive tasks for educability, to investigate the role of transitivity in other domains of reasoning, and potentially to benefit the lived experiences of persons with developmental issues

Comportamento matemático: relações ordinais e inferência transitiva em pré-escolares

Um repertório matemático elementar pode ser diretamente ensinado a pré-escolares em risco de dificuldades de aprendizagem. Nesta pesquisa, examinou-se o controle do comportamento por relações ordinais em 14 crianças (idade média: 5 anos e 1 mês) com baixo rendimento escolar numa escola municipal de Vitória. Inicialmente, os estudantes foram avaliados de modo individualizado, em seguida aplicou-se um procedimento de ensino informatizado para ensinar desempenhos ordinais e avaliou-se a ocorrência de desempenhos gerativos. Todas as crianças alcançaram o critério de ensino, estabelecendo-se o controle do comportamento por relações ordinais. Na avaliação da transferência de funções de estímulo 14 crianças ordenaram novas seqüências de estímulos com o procedimento informatizado e oito crianças com o procedimento não informatizado. Conclui-se que habilidades básicas para o aprendizado da matemática podem ser diretamente ensinadas, apesar das falhas no repertório inicial da criança